Finally Seeing Jupiter's Great Red Spot

This summer I’ve been trying to map the entire surface of Jupiter, but the great red spot has been relatively elusive. For some reason whenever I’ve had good weather it hasn’t been in view, until tonight!

My wonderful wife agreed to do kid bedtime duty so I could sneak outside for a quick image capture. Because of the quick setup I don’t remember the exact settings, but it was something like 20ms shutter and 275 gain. As usual for Jupiter I used a 4x barlow and my ZWO ASI290MC camera.

I stacked the top 25% of frames in Autostakkert and sharpened the image in Registax.

This is probably my best Jupiter to date, though I’m still confused what causes the vertical lines on the right side of the planet. It seems to be an artifact from stacking, and it’s always in the same location.

While I was out I figured I hadn’t given Saturn enough love this summer. I really don’t remember the settings for this shot but the telescope setup was the same. Same 25% stacking in Autostakkert and sharpened with wavelets in Registax.

I don’t know if I can say it’s my best Saturn image yet, but it’s damn close. It’s definitely better than I was expecting for such an impromptu image capture.

Saturn and Jupiter are getting a bit low in the western sky as the sky is getting dark, so these may be my last images of them for the year. These two are always a real treat to see in the sky and I’ll look forward to seeing them again next year!